


The Worthington Gene

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Anal Sex, Barebacking, Body Horror, Body Modification, Comic Book Science, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Desperation, First Kiss, First Time, Gay For You, Gore, Kissing, M/M, Masturbation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Oral Sex, Orgasm, POV Steve Rogers, POV Third Person, POV Tony Stark, Pain, Size Difference, Size Kink, Slow Romance, Transformation, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 12:03:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10990563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: I had a request for Stony wingfic, so...When Steve, Bucky and Sam go in to dismantle a Hydra facility that's been experimenting on young mutants, an explosion causes Steve some unexpected damage - and some unexpected transformation. Whilst coming to terms with the reality of his new body, Steve also comes to terms with his changing feelings towards Tony Stark.





	1. The Growth Of Bone

**Author's Note:**

> Checking off wingfic on The Classics of Fandom Trope Bingo.
> 
> And checking off First Time and Body Transformation on The Good, The Bad And The Smutty.
> 
>  

Steve looks out of the window of the helicopter as it rises from the pad, resting his head on the cool glass. Bucky is leaning forwards in his seat, his expression serious, his metal hand flat over his mouth and rubbing idly over the stubble around his jaw, the other tightly holding onto one of Tony’s tablet computers. He’s reading some book Nat had recommended to him, and Steve can understand a little bit of Russian when they’re talking, but the Cyrillic script is a complete mystery to him, so he doesn’t bother to try to read it.

Bucky’s kind of a mystery to him now anyway, even after two years or so of having him back, so Steve tries to keep a little distance. It had put him off in the beginning, having Steve trying _so hard_ to get close to him again, and Steve doesn’t want to keep it up in that regard.

He’ll come to Steve if any more memories come back. Steve can’t try to force it, much as he wants to.

Glancing behind him, Steve looks at the back of Sam’s head. He’s comfortable in the pilot’s chair, talking on the radio in a voice that Steve recognizes as military-cultivated, even with all the things that have changed over the past few decades. Sam is in his element here, flicking switches as he keeps his other hand on the flight column, and Steve turns his head away again, looking at Stark Tower as it fades away beneath them.

The word **STARK** has been replaced, and now it says **AVENGERS** in a glowing blue that lights up the city at night, and despite himself, Steve feels his lip twitch.

It had been Tony’s idea.

After SHIELD had kind of gone to shit, it had been his idea to start something _without_ their involvement, something—

Better.

Hanging from one of the broader, floor-to-ceiling windows, Steve catches a glance of Teddy Altman, who holds onto the frame of the window with his left hand and supports his boyfriend with his right, balancing Billy on his shoulder. It’s dangerous as all Hell, but it doesn’t seem like they care, and Steve grins to himself and gives them a little wave.

Billy waves back so enthusiastically that Teddy nearly drops him, and both of them disappear back through the window’s gap as the helicopter turns away from the building.

The kids hadn’t been the first part of it.

No, firstly it had been reorganising the whole building, and Tony had got Steve to help him, got all of them to help him. “I wanna be like the X-Men,” he’d said, walking through a corridor with a precariously balanced laptop in one hand as his other gestured wildly, “but you know, better. We’ve got dibs on the Maximoffs, so long as their dad doesn’t get too involved.”

Steve had shared a glance with Nat, not knowing what to do with that, but they’d follow Tony through the plans.

The Avengers are no longer a team-based response team: the Avengers are a damned league of justice, and it’s something Steve never dreamed he could be a part of. He, Sam and Bucky are going off to deal with this shit in New Mexico, and Clint and Nat are already putting out a fire with Carol Danvers on the other side of New York State. That’s the thing, these days: they split into smaller response teams, and in the event of a bigger crisis, they have dozens of people to call on.

And then there’s the kids.

Steve had respected Tony, before this, but when SHIELD died off— Well. He’d expected the guy to go crazy, get ready to lead some kind of civil war, but he hadn’t done that. Tony had locked himself in his office for three weeks and burst out ready to build something obscene, something to actually help people.

There’s kids in the building, for Hell’s sake.

That’d been Tony’s big focus: he’d wanted to bring kids in from all over, kids in the foster system that were good with computers, mutant kids that wanted to stay in the city rather than heading out to the X-Men’s mansion, half-aliens, geniuses, science experiments gone wrong. Steve had gotten a look at Tony’s notes, and scrawled in Tony’s untidy hand at the top of the page had been, _kids that don’t play well with others_.

It’s just something else, Steve thinks, walking through the big living room on the fortieth floor and seeing Peter Parker losing at Wii Bowling to Tony, Luke Cage and Vision, in that order – especially given that Deadpool was cheering Peter on from the other couch, but he isn’t a member of the Avengers Initiative. He just shows up sometimes, and so long as he doesn’t break anything, no one really bothers to kick him out.

“Steve,” Bucky says. His voice is so low these days, and even without the dark makeup he’d had smeared over his eyes when Steve and Sam had first pulled him in, he still has that lost, slightly distant look to him.

“Yeah, Buck?” Buck shows him the messaging service on his screen.

“Tony wants to know if this t-shirt is yours or Elijah Bradley’s.” Bucky stares at Steve, and says, “Tony says it’s too young for you if it’s yours.”

“Is it the one of Isaiah Bradley on a motorbike, and he’s just wearing a leather jacket and no shirt?” Sam asks from the cockpit. Bucky glances up, looks at the picture of the Black Captain America on the shirt, and then replies in an unemotive voice, “Yes.”

“Shit, I’ve been looking for that everywhere, I think it fell out of my overnight bag when we got back from Moscow. Tell Tony it’s mine.” Steve laughs, and he turns back to the window, letting his eyes shut closed for a little. It’s surprising, how easy it is to sleep listening to the regular whir of the rotors above them, and he lets himself doze for the flight.

\-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ-✪-✪-✪-----

“Shit, Steve, you okay?” Sam says, and Steve blinks wildly, turning his head from side to side and glancing around. His vision is slightly blurred, and he can hear the loud **_thwick thwick thwick_** of the helicopter as it starts back up again. There’s a tremendous pain burning through his back, and his hands are grasped tightly around one of Sam’s, but Sam doesn’t betray the pain he must be feeling. “You got knocked out in the explosion.”

Steve grabs reflexively, but he feels the shield on the seat next to him, and a little of the stiffness melts away. The pain in his back is absolutely agonizing, though, and he heaves in a little gasp as his vision starts to clear.

“What happened?” Steve demands, his voice slightly hoarse. He remembers running into the facility – it was a Hydra-run place, and they were to rendezvous with the X-Men, who were going to be focusing on rescuing some of the captured mutants while Steve, Sam and Bucky took care of the security and agents, but… “I remember talking to Emma Frost, working out a plan. We went in – they took out some kids, but there wasn’t any security…?”

“It was a trap,” Bucky says, and Steve can tell he’s scowling even without craning his head to see him in the cockpit. Steve is glad he can fly the thing himself – he doesn’t know how well Bucky would do at checking him over, not like Sam can. As Sam holds his finger in front of Steve’s face, making him follow it to see how well his eyes are focusing, Bucky continues, “We’d just got the last of the kids out when that happened – looks like they’d already decided to clear out the facility, and just figured it’d be a good way to take a few of us out. All the X-Men are intact.”

“Injuries?” Steve says, and Bucky snaps back his answer with all the clarity and stiffness a soldier would.

“Two broken arms among them – McCoy’s got a broken ulna, and Summers shattered his own in the blast. Some deep cuts, some bruises, and I think Frost has some internal damage, but they’ve got a medic with them. She’ll be fine.” There’s a short pause, and then Bucky adds, “My leg has shrapnel in it, but I’ll get it taken out back at the tower, and Sam has a scrape up his side, but it glanced off him.”

“It’s not even bleeding too much,” Sam says immediately, but it doesn’t really dissuade Steve too much. A sudden burst of pain shocks through his left shoulder blade, and he lets out a cry of pain, leaning forwards and taking the pressure of the seat off his back. He feels the air on him, and he furrows his brow. Gritting his teeth, he bites out, “My back? I- I caught blast, didn’t I? I remember being thrown clear out.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “They wanted to take you in the X-Plane so their medic could work on you, but James said you’d rather have our people work on you.”

“Yeah,” Steve nods – enough people have his medical records on hand, and Steve doesn’t really feel like spreading them out to anyone else, even the X-Men, who’re pretty trustworthy. “What’s it look like?”

“Well, the suit was torn when you were in there—” Steve remembers the sudden feel of air on his back when a piece of metal had fallen from the floor above, sharp as knives and just glancing off him – it wouldn’t have done _too_ much damage to Steve himself, but it had cut through the reinforced fabric with an uncomfortable ease. “And then something hit you during the explosion – there was a wall of bottles and test tubes, and you were just hit with glass shards and that stuff, I mean…” Sam trails off.

“What?” Steve demands, just as another wave of pain hits him like a punch, and he feels something strange _jutting_ from him – it can’t be shrapnel, though, and he would notice if he’d dislocated one of his shoulders. “What the Hell is that?” He keeps his composure, forcing the panic out of his voice and ensuring that none of it shows – but he can see on Sam’s face already that he doesn’t know.

By the time they touch down on the top of the tower, Steve can barely move, stiff as a board and trying his best not to move a single muscle in his back. Sam and Bucky have to lift him from the helicopter by his upper arms, and he can hear Maximoff barking orders ( _he sounds like his father when he does that_ , Steve thinks vaguely, knowing that Maximoff would hate to be told) and moving the kids out of the way, telling them they shouldn’t be on the top floor anyway, and Steve feels himself dip in and out of consciousness as they take him to the lift and take him down a few floors.

Steve lets out a sharp sound as he’s laid on his belly on a thin bed (they remind him of the beds he sees in the infirmaries in _Star Trek_ , which he’s been watching with Sam), and he grabs tightly at the mattress underneath him, feeling his fingers dig right through its fabric and not being able to stop himself. He’s gritting his teeth so hard to keep from screaming that he can feel his skull ringing: it’s as bad as the pain he’d had in that damned tank, once upon a time, but it’s all concentrated in his shoulders – and he swears, he _swears_ he can feel his bones jutting out of his skin, forcing themselves through like needles through a taut cloth, and it’s only gotten worse since he got out of the helicopter.

He bets Hydra didn’t bet on being able to kill him, but someone will have won a bet, at least.

 -----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ-✪-✪-✪-----

On the observation deck over the medical wing, Tony stands right in front of the window, passing a baseball behind his hands. He doesn’t want to look at his screens or his work right now: he doesn’t want to look at anything except Steve Rogers, writhing on one of the medical tables as they try to cut the rest of the suit off him. Somewhere inside him, there’s a vague belief that if he just keeps watching, if he just keeps his gaze on Steve, he’ll pull through, and he won’t die.

Steve _can’t_ die.

Tony knows he can’t help him, knows he has exactly 0 medical expertise, but if he just keeps on _watching_ , Steve will be fine.

Tony thinks this even as he sees the sick, yellow-white sprigs of bone that are sticking at a harsh angle out of Steve’s back, and they just keep on _growing_. Sam had briefed them that there’d been nothing at all on Steve’s back when they’d pulled him off the grounds but scratches and cuts, but by the time they’d pulled him out of the helicopter the jutting bone had already been close to half a foot long on each side. It looks like he’s growing extra fucking arms out of his damned back, and there’s blood and viscous, yellow fluid clinging to his back.

Tony had thought they were on the way to something a little like perfection, with the Avengers Tower working at capacity, with kids learning and growing with them, with heroes as far as the eye could see lined up – because actually, Tony has discovered, he plays pretty well with others, now that he knows what he’s about.

Even Pepper had told him so, and it had been an awkward, long moment between them, because they’re not together any more, and Tony had thought, stupidly, for some damn reason, that they’d be together forever.

With a sickening, wet snap that Tony hears through the speakers, the bones on each side split and bow in the middle, so they resemble the ulna and radius of someone’s arm, and they bend at the forming joint.

Jesus, what’s _happening_ to him?

This is Tony’s fault. It’s Tony’s fault, _Tony’s_ fault – he’d picked that damn lab, he’d agreed when Prof. Xavier had called him up and asked for help, _he’d_ said that Sam and Steve were best with kids, and that Barnes would be good back up with them.

 ** _Shit_** , Tony thinks to himself.

“Kids are all downstairs,” Pietro says, appearing next to Tony with an expression of deep, scowling concern on his face. Pietro is in element with the kids, really, and Tony knows he only looks so freaked out now because he’s so worried about them, but Pietro stands beside Tony all the same, chin high, dark eyes narrowred, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders square – _He looks his father when he stands like that,_ Tony thinks, and he feels a moment of guilt that he does his best to stifle. “They’re worried, obviously, but Wanda’s looking after them. Billy and Tommy are helping her.”

This, Tony thinks, he says with more pride than he would ever have expected from Pietro – though it’s definitely unfairly weighted on Tommy’s side rather than that of his other nephew, he’s quite sure.

But then, Tony has favourites too, so he can’t really judge.

“You okay?” Tony asks. He doesn’t look at Pietro anymore: he keeps his gaze back down on Steve, even as Steve’s yells and groans come amplified on the speakers above their heads. He sees Pietro’s head move out of the corner of his eye, sees Pietro’s expression soften slightly with surprise.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Came to report in. Hank’s got everyone off the plane. They’re responsible for the rescue of fourteen young mutants, most of them under the age of ten. They think they’re kids pulled out of foreign foster systems and isolated orphanages, stuff like that – the ones that are old enough to talk can’t speak much English, any of them, but Hank says they’ve got Doug Ramsey getting through to them. They had to send someone to get him from Omaha, but they’ve got hold of him now, anyway.”

“Good,” Tony says. He should be writing this shit down, but Wanda will be noting down the report downstairs anyway, and Tony isn’t in the mood for admin stuff right now. “They’ll be glad.”

He hears the door open behind them, and he knows based off of the strange, too-stiff gait that it’s Barnes, but he doesn’t say anything. He just sinks slowly onto the sofa behind them, looking down with the same focus Tony has, and within a minute or two, Wilson joins them to do the same thing.

The four of them stand (and sit) in complete silence for the longest time, until Steve is so exhausted a few hours later that he falls unconscious – by this point, flesh and fat are forming on the bones, and it’s like watching one of those sped-up videos of something rotting in reverse: it’s sick is what it is, but it doesn’t turn Tony’s stomach.

He’s put his hand in his own heart, after all, and he’s uncomfortably used to gore, even if it’s not this fucking weird.

“He’s growing wings,” Pietro says as a sudden jut of cartilage spikes from the growing flesh, making Steve shake and whimper even whilst knocked out. “They’re just like Warren Worthington’s.”

“Angel? Isn’t that guy dead?” Tony hears Sam ask. Pietro doesn’t answer: he suddenly disappears from Tony’s peripheral vision, the stairwell door slamming shut behind him, and Tony sets his jaw. He’s not a medical guy, but he’d read a report on Warren Worthington’s regenerative ability, once – how they’d tried to cut off the kid’s wings a dozen times when he was younger, and they’d grown back every damned time.

“Jesus Christ,” Barnes says, softly. He says it like he’s never said it before – Tony would believe that he hasn’t.

\-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ-✪-✪-✪-----

It takes about three days.

Tony barely sleeps, only eating whatever crackers or whatever that people keep pushing into his hands to try to get him to eat _something_ , and he doesn’t fucking shift, even though his legs are aching from standing in one position, and his neck is sore from falling asleep for short phases on the couch.

By the end of day two, the wings have almost finished growing in, weird, finger like protuberances appearing at their corners, the heavy muscle and lines of cartilage obvious under the bald skin. Steve partly comes awake at that point, dazed and drinking water like he’s never tasted it before, but he’s trance-like, not really able to answer questions or talk to his doctors.

When the feathers start coming in, he shifts and scratches himself like a mad man, trying to reach back to pull the yellow-gold sprouts out by the roots before they’re finished growing in, and they have to restrain him.

It mostly works, and he only breaks out twice over the next twenty or so hours.

He falls asleep again, then, and it’s then, when he hears one of the doctors say that his condition is stable, that he’s going to be fine, that Tony leaves the observation deck, takes a nap, grabs a shower and changes his clothes, and comes down to the infirmary himself.

Tony had taken four or five hours, and Steve is just waking up, his eyes heavily lidded and red-rimmed. There are marks on his lips from where, at one point, he’d bitten clean through the flesh there, but they’ve cleaned away most of the blood from his face and his neck and his back, and the only lingering stains are those on the mattress underneath him, which… Well. It’s a mess, to say the least, but it’s really the least of anybody’s worries.

Steve is dazed, his head lolling loosely on his neck as he drinks more water, his throat working as he gulps it down, and he takes savage bites from the crackers in his hands. Tony takes a seat beside the bed, absolutely silent and waiting for Steve to acknowledge him rather than trying to get the guy to focus on him immediately.

“Tony,” Steve says hoarsely. He shifts, trying to push himself up into a seated position: instinctively, Tony guesses, his wings spread out to balance him, and with the soft fluttering sound of their movement, Steve’s eyes go obscenely wide. “Tony?”

“Doc,” Tony calls, and one of the doctors comes over: she’s tall and red-headed, with freckles on her little nose and blue, blue eyes. She looks too much like Pepper, so Tony looks at Steve instead of her.

“Mr Rogers,” she says softly. “How’re you feeling?”

“What’s on my back?” Steve demands, sounding like he’s been gargling broken glass – at some point, his screams had broken in the middle, and Tony wonders how long it will take for his vocal chords to heal from the damage. Experimentally, he’s shifting the wings around – they must have a six or seven foot span on each side, and they grow as if they’re natural extensions of Steve’s shoulder blades, as if they’ve always been there.

“Wings, Mr Rogers. During the explosive blast, you were hit with some attempts at refined serums attempting to make use of mutant genomes, including some from the late Warren Worthington III. It would seem that on its own they were defunct, but those in your bloodstream acted as a catalyst upon contact.” Tony listens intently: this bit, at least, is easier for him to grasp.

\-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ-✪-✪-✪-----

Steve tunes out the scientific babble – she’s started going on about DNA resequencing and genomes and retroactive mutation, and Steve doesn’t care about anything. Instead, he focuses internally, feeling the shift of the extra limbs on his back – even if he wanted to pay attention to the doctor’s talk, it would have been difficult. He feels their weight upon him, feels the new muscles that he can _sort_ of control – but it’s strange, surreal, as if he’s been transplanted into a new body entirely. It’s not the same as after the first treatment all those years ago: that had still been _him_ , just with more muscle, more speed, more strength.

It hadn’t _added_ bits to him, just built on what little was there.

One by one, Steve clenches and stretches out the little – fingers? – at the ends of each of the wings, feeling their joints like his fingers or his toes, and then he tries to draw in the wings himself. Their bones aren’t so different to that of his arms, and it’s like drawing his elbows in close to his body in the inverse.

“Doc,” Steve says. He stops her mid-paragraph, but he doesn’t feel bad. “Can you get these off?” She hesitates, and his heart sinks.

“Mr Worthington had regenerative abilities that enabled him to regrow his wings even upon their complete surgical removal, Mr Rogers. We would predict that the same would happen to you, with all the pain involved, and with no potential benefit.” Steve sits up properly, pushing himself off the bed. He stumbles slightly as he tries to stand, feeling his head spin and his empty stomach turn, but he spreads his wings out fast, keeping his balance.

Doing so knocks over the dripstand beside his bed, and the saline needle is ripped right out of his arm, but almost immediately the wound closes up.

Barefoot and clad only in a loose pair of nurse’s scrubs they must have put on him for the sake of modesty, Steve walks towards the door.

“Mr Rogers!” the doctor calls, but he ignores her, pulling his wings into his body so he can fit through the doorframe and out onto the stairs.

“Steve,” Tony says, and he’s running to keep up with Steve’s brisk walk.

“Not interested in chit-chat right now, Stark,” Steve bites out. “I’m getting something to eat, and then I’m going to bed.” God, he’s angry. He doesn’t remember a time he’s been so fucking angry, since fury burned through his veins like it is right now – why the _Hell_ would this have to happen to him? Steve’s grown accustomed to the superhuman normality of his body, and he _likes_ it, hadn’t liked the weakness of the form he’d had once upon a time.

Christ knows Steve doesn’t miss eating a bowl of fucking liver for breakfast in the hope that his organs wouldn’t just conk out during the day – but _wings_?

This isn’t what he signed up for, and he feels like punching clear through a punching bag – and he would if it weren’t for the soft ache ringing in his new bones. He feels Tony touch his shoulder, and he doesn’t think about it: he whirls around, pins Tony against the wall with his fisted in the fabric of his shirt, and Tony looks up at him with his brown eyes wide.

“Don’t touch me, Stark,” Steve snaps.

“What, big guy, you want me to leave you alone so you can be a broody little hen?” Tony asks, arching his eyebrows. Steve feels his fist clench at his side, but if he punched Tony he’d probably kill him. “You saved fourteen kids from that facility, Cap. Don’t tell me it wasn’t worth it.” Steve stops for a second, breathing in.

“Fourteen?”

“Most of them were real little kids, Maximoff says. He’s got the full report.” Steve lets Tony go, and he walks slower now, letting Tony fall into step beside him. Tony’s hands are in his pockets, his lips pressed together, and he says, “It took about three days.”

“I remember,” Steve says, bluntly, a little _too_ bluntly. Tony shrugs.

“Fine.” They walk in silence until they reach the lift. Steve looks at it for a few seconds, and then turns, taking the stairs, and Tony takes them with him. They pass by Tommy Shepherd when they leave the well a few floors down, and Steve hears the boy’s quiet, _“Whoa!”_ before he shifts past the two of them at speed.

Steve’s never wanted to smack the kid before, but he does now.

Steve goes right to the fridge in the ridiculously big, industrial-style kitchen, and he takes out a packet of chicken and some cheese, wanting something that won’t take long and will be simple to cook.

Tony sits on a stool at the raised kitchen island and watches him like he’s just met Steve for the first time, like he isn’t sure exactly what to do with him or what to say. Steve pours a little oil into a pan that he heats on the gas hob, glad there’s a mix of electric and gas ovens in the room, even with their focus on being eco-friendly, and he turns to look at Tony. Cautiously, he lets himself lean back against the side of the counter, hyperaware of where his wings are and doing his best to keep them out of the frying pan, but it’s not actually as hard as he expects it to be.

Tony is seated with his hands drumming on the counter in front of him, keeping his gaze on Steve, and this time, Steve meets it properly. Tony looks worried as Hell, and a twinge of guilt hits Steve before he stifles it, turning and pouring chicken into the pan, hearing the satisfying _hiss_ as it begins to cook.

“How long were you up there?” Steve asks. He’d caught a glimpse of Tony up on the observation deck: the memories are confused and disorganized in his head, but he remembers seeing different people there, Nat, Clint, Maximoff, Bucky and Sam – even Loki was up there for a little while – but always seeing Tony.

“Three days,” Tony says, and when Steve looks at him, he’s grinning. Steve doesn’t return the smile.

“Why?” Steve asks. Tony shrugs. “Didn’t Pepper make you quit it?” Something passes over Tony’s face, a shadow Steve isn’t familiar with, and Steve frowns, tilting his head a little to the side and furrowing his brow.

“Me and Pepper broke up a few weeks back,” Tony says, a little stuntedly. Steve stares at him. “We’ve not told anyone yet, except Rhodey, you know.” Tony is looking at his fingernails instead of at Steve, and Steve doesn’t know what to say.

“Sorry,” he offers. He feels his wings shift slightly, an instinctive movement, and they curve slightly around his head and his shoulders, like a cowl. Steve is going to have to spend time learning his own damned body language. “What, uh, what happened?” He doesn’t expect Tony to tell him, and he’s right not to – Tony just shrugs again, and changes the subject.

“How’re ya gonna sleep?”

“Dunno,” Steve mutters, and he turns back to the hob, turning the strips of chicken over and adding lemon, garlic, a little chilli. He breathes in the scents as they rise from the pan, mingling with the cooking meat, and as he shifts lightly on the balls of his feet, there’s a little more ache in his mid-back – he hasn’t learned to hold himself properly yet, Steve figures, and there’ll be pains and twinges for the next few days, at least. He glances back to Tony, whose gaze is on the wings themselves, and he says, “You wanna touch ‘em?”

Tony jolts back as if he’s been shocked.

“What?” he asks.

“You’re looking at them. You can touch them, Tony, it won’t kill me.”

“I gotta go,” Tony says, pulling himself down from his seat. “Pietro picked up some stuff on Worthington from the X-Men – uh, you know, they had some special furniture designs for him, medical stuff, stretches, stuff like that. He died a few years back, but some of the guys knew him, so, you know.” Steve watches Tony leave, going at speed, but he doesn’t call him back. He just grabs some tortilla wraps, sits down, and begins to eat.

As he does so, he can’t quite stop the slight tremble in his feathers.


	2. Getting To Bed

Tony spends the next few weeks holed up in his private lab, down in the basement of the building where only Pepper and Pietro have the access code. It’s weird, on several levels, that Pietro has sort of wormed his way into Tony’s trust, but the guy is funny, and he’s sarcastic, and because he’s about as emotionally constipated as Tony is, he doesn’t do anything awkward like trying to ask him about his feelings.

Tony works on anything that comes to his mind, having a go at rewriting the code for his operating system, going over the notes Loki had given him for a taser stick that frankly, terrifies Tony, looking at everything from his cars to motorbikes to ovens to computers to _guns_.

He doesn’t know why.

The idea of going upstairs with the kids, with the rest of the Avengers, where Steve is walking up and down the corridors with wings on his back, is almost sickening to him, so he stays downstairs, orders take-out that either Pepper or Pietro drop down to him, and he sleeps on the cot-like bed in the corner of the lab, against the wall with six or seven monitors watching over him.

He knows this kind of isolation isn’t great, and it’s kind of driving him crazy, given how used he’s gotten to talking to people who’re on his level every damn day, talking about all kinds of shit, but it’s just easier down here.

Barring a few false starts, where he’s found himself halfway up the stairs and changed his mind, he’s not left the confines of the lab for anything at all: Captain America usually runs the Avengers Initiative anyway, and if Tony usually picks up a lot of it himself, no one really notices.

Pretty much everybody has been leaving him alone, actually, and he’s both surprised and a little offended.

It’s just coming to the end of the month when he hears a call on the intercom, and calls back, “Come in!” from under the Ford Model B.

“What’s the code?” Tony slams his head on the axel, hard, and hisses in pain as he pulls himself out from under the car. He puts his hand to his head and immediately regrets it, because the split in the skin is now doused with black car grease, and he groans as he stumbles towards the door, slamming his free hand onto the entry pad and causing it to open, although he leaves a black print of his hand on the sensor.

As he goes to grab an antiseptic wipe and a cloth, he hears Steve enter the room more than he sees him – his eyes are tight shut to make sure he doesn’t rub any of the damn stuff in his eyes, ‘cause shit knows chemical washes aren’t fun at three in the morning.

“What the Hell?” Steve asks, and Tony waves his hand as gently wipes over the small cut on his head. It feels like the split is only an inch or two wide, but it still stings to all Hell, and he’s irritated that he’d let himself get so rattled by Steve’s voice.

“I hit my head on the axel, then got fuckin’ oil in it when I tried to feel how big it was,” Tony mutters, cautiously opening his eyes a little and taking a look at himself in one of the little engineering mirrors on his desk. It’s already scabbing up fine, so he takes his towel and wipes the handprint off the sensor, making a mental note to get one of the smarter robots to have a real go at it later tonight.

For the first time, he turns his head and looks at Steve, and his mouth drops open.

Steve is standing with his hands crossed over his chest, one of his blond eyebrows raised and a little smirk on his face, and he says, “Some kinda genius, huh?” Steve is wearing one of his white t-shirts, which is holding tight to his chest and his washboard abs, paired with a pair of blue running pants, his sneakers white as clean snow; his wings have darkened since Tony last saw them, now a tawny brown in some places, and a darker gold in others, matching Steve’s hair.

“Yeah, well,” Tony says, shortly, and he throws his towel into the trash can, walking past Steve and giving him a wide berth so he doesn’t brush past his feathers, settling down at one of his computers. “Wilson mad you’re stealing his thunder?”

“Not really,” Steve says, giving a shrug of his shoulders: the wings move with them, like a natural extension or amplification of the expression, and Tony struggles to tear his gaze away from their reflection in one of the dark monitors.

“I never liked birds much,” Tony says, and Steve snorts. There’s a silence between them, broken only by the sound of their breathing, the whir of the computers around them, and the soft shuffle of Steve’s feathers against each other as his wings shift.

And then Steve says, “What’s up, Tony?”

“You, these days,” Tony says immediately, but Steve doesn’t laugh. He meets Tony’s stare in the black screen, his expression as serious as Thor gets over pudding, and for some reason, Tony feels himself _gulp_. There’s a kind of electric tension in the room that definitely can’t be blamed on Tony’s heart, and Tony feels himself frozen in place at the computer console as Steve takes a step closer. “Look, Cap, I’m not doing anything – you know, I get the urge to just work in the lab sometimes, and—”

Steve grabs the back of Tony’s chair, pulls it back, and swings Tony around so that they’re facing each other. He does it with so much ease and speed that Tony feels his inner ear make a vague, wobbly protest at the abrupt spin. “When you got a particular project, yeah, but Maximoff says you’ve been working on everything from here to Philadelphia.”

“What the fuck is he telling you that shit for?” Tony demands, sharply, and Steve’s jaw is set, his pink lips (were they always that pink? Captain America has lips like a fucking girl) pressed together.

“Those were my orders, Tony. I said no one was to disturb you except Pepper and Maximoff, and I asked him to keep me updated so I knew how you were.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Tony says, sarcastically. “I didn’t realize I was one of your damned soldiers.”

“You put my name at the head of the Initiative, Tony,” Steve reminds him, as if Tony hadn’t _just_ been thinking about it, as if Tony could forget. “I take it pretty seriously. I wanted to give you time to work through whatever it is you need, but Tony, it’s been a month. I need to check in.”

“Consider yourself checked in, Cap – update your Facebook, write it on your Twitter, whatever the Hell you want. Tony’s _fine_.” He tries to swing back in his chair, but Steve’s grip on the chair’s armrest is like iron, and Tony meets Steve’s gaze, trying to school the defiance out of his own features and failing utterly.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks. It comes out like an order. When Tony tries to get out of the chair, Steve’s other hand claps down on the other armrest, trapping Tony in the chair with Steve’s face looming over him and his wings spread like a canopy on both sides. It blocks out the light from his computers, blocks out some of the whir of the engine – all Tony can hear is the pump of his own blood in his ears, and he has to concentrate to keep himself from breathing any faster.

“Maybe I don’t want to work with some asshole with wings, Cap. You considered that?”

“No,” Steve says, staying irritatingly calm. “You don’t have an issue with mutants – you don’t actually have issues with _anyone_ , so long as they have a little personality. I can believe it’s the wings, Tony, but I don’t get it.” Tony’s heart is really pounding now, and he can feel it under the Arc Reactor, feel the echo of it in his ears. “What it is? I asked if you wanted to touch them, and you _ran_ from me. You hid down here like some kind of kid.” Tony is breathing fast, blood rushing in his head, but it’s not like he feels when he’s about to have a panic attack – he just feels overstimulated, trapped in his place. “You scared of birds?”

“ _No_ ,” Tony snaps. Steve’s eyes are blue as Hell, but they’re not blue like Pepper’s are – they’re a lighter, icier colour, and doesn’t that make sense? Steve’s skin is clear, without any of the cute freckles Pepper has, and he’s so much bigger, so much broader, so much— “No, I’m not scared of birds, Rogers, now will you quit the interrogation and just leave—” Steve leans in closer, so that they’re nearly nose-to-nose, and Tony just feels almost disconnected from his damn body, now, like he’s floating a little – instead of grease and ozone and metal, he smells Steve, smells his sweat, the weird chocolate cologne Nat got him as a joke last Christmas that he insists on wearing, whatever fancy fruits he put in his little smoothie after coming out of the training hall.

“You seem pretty scared, Tony,” Steve says, with that undertone to his voice Tony usually only hears when he’s about to get in a fight, and Tony feels himself shiver at the idea of Steve’s hand on his throat. “Your pupils are blown to shit.”

“That’s a bad word.”

“So bite me,” Steve retorts, and Tony feels himself let out a stuttered gasp, and it clicks in his head. Steve, not Pepper, Steve, not Pepper – Steve…

Tony leans, turns his head, grabs at Steve’s shirt, and kisses Steve on the mouth.

\-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ-✪-✪-✪-----

Steve, for the first week or so, just lets Tony be.

“Hey, Pepper,” Steve says when he sees her in the corridor, and she glances at him, tilting her head to the side and looking at him expectantly. There’s no one else in the hall, but he still lowers his voice, “Uh, look, I know about you and Tony, but he’s pretty down this week, so I’m gonna put it out there that everybody’s gotta leave him alone except you and Maximoff, okay? If that’s not alright, just let me know.”

“That’s fine, Steve,” Pepper says, and he can see the worry in her eyes. Part of him wants to ask her – what happened? He got the vibe from Tony that she’d ended it rather than the other way around, but there’s a curiosity he’s almost ashamed of, where he wants to know exactly when they ended it, why, how she did it, how he took it, why he’s been keeping it secret—

Steve doesn’t ask a thing.

“And I’m gonna ask Maximoff to give me a few ideas about how he is, but he’s not spying on Tony or anything – I’m just trying to look out for him.” Something in Pepper’s expression that Steve didn’t know was stiff relaxes, and she smiles at Steve. Pepper’s sort of an enigma to Steve, even now: she’s pleasant and she seems pretty kind, but he doesn’t really know that much about her, and he feels like he’s never going to. “I give you my word, Ma’am.”

“I believe it,” Pepper replies lightly, and she gives Steve a nod as she heads down the corridor, parting ways with him.

Of course, by the second week, some of the kids are asking questions. Tony doesn’t give them classes like some of the more organized Avengers do, but he’ll sit down with the ones that are interested in electronics or engineering and give them tutoring sessions (why Tony pretends he doesn’t like kids, sometimes, Steve has no idea), and he’s a regular face in the corridors and the rooms.

Steve just brushes them off with explanations that sometimes people need to isolate themselves for a little while to regroup and recharge, but after a month, Steve knows it’s not normal.

And all of this worry, Steve is still trying to accustom to his own new problems, for God’s sake – and Tony’s not doing it on purpose, Steve is sure, not actually trying to add any difficulty to Steve’s life, but God, it’s hard.

Steve trains.

Steve works.

Steve co-ordinates other teams of Avengers in the field, because he can’t be sure of his own abilities yet, and he hates it, hates not being able to go out in his usual command capacity, but he knows that it would be irresponsible to do anything else.

When Tony has been holed up in his lab for just over a month, Steve finds himself on the roof of Stark Tower, alone. It’s around two o’clock in the morning, and he’s sure that Tony is still awake, but he doesn’t know yet if he wants to try him out.

For the first time, Steve flies.

He’s let himself glide a little in the training hall, and even tried a few uncertain flaps, but even the high ceilings weren’t quite high enough – and now Steve stands at the top of a ninety-three storey building, and with the tips of his toes touching the edge of the building, he drops forwards.

He free-falls, initially, lets himself drop faster and faster, feeling the air hiss at speed through his feathers, and feels the pressure building and building against his eyes (but it doesn’t actually hurt as he’s sure it would have once upon a time), and then at around the twentieth storey he spreads his wings wide, feeling himself suddenly slow, and he can’t stop himself from letting out a whoop that echoes from the glass-fronted buildings he’s surrounded by.

It’s like swimming, but somehow it’s a thousand times easier, and he can draw himself through the air with a powerful flap of the wings behind him – for forty minutes at least he just dives and rises above and around the city, and when he finally drops down beside the doors of Stark Tower, the muscles at the base of his back ache a little from the work, but it’s nice rather than painful.

He still feels the new rush in his head as he takes the stairwell down to Tony’s lab, and he’s grinning as he rings the intercom to be let in.

Of course, asking Tony what the Hell is up doesn’t go quite the way he expected.

\-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ-✪-✪-✪-----

Tony’s mouth is warm on Steve’s own, and Steve can’t help the sharp exhalation of surprise that the younger man draws out of him, but he doesn’t draw away. He lets Tony grab at his shirt, leans right into it, grips a little more tightly at the armrests of Tony’s ridiculous, spinning chair, opening his mouth slightly and encouraging the other to kiss him harder.

He doesn’t want to domineer over Tony, so he lets him control the kiss, lets Tony lean right into Steve’s mouth and let his tongue draw over Steve’s, lets him bite at Steve’s lower lip and gasp in his mouth, and Steve has thought about this, idly, but never even considered that Tony might reciprocate any sort of attraction to him.

When Tony finally breaks away with a heavy gasp, Steve can’t help the little grin on his face, leaning back slightly and spreading his wings out wide – it’s a natural movement, one that he’s noticed himself do a few times now, and satisfaction settles in his belly.

“Huh,” Steve says. Tony’s mouth is closed, his eyes deep and slightly wide, and Steve catches himself, watching him cautiously. “You okay?”

“You just kissed me,” Tony says.

“I think you’ll find you kissed me, bud.”

“Yeah, but you kissed me back!” Tony says, frustration obvious on his face, and Steve feels his brow drop into a furrow as he looks at the other man, perplexed. “You— You’re not— I can’t—” Tony puts his head in his hands, pressing his fingers against the sides of his skull, and Steve watches him, his lips parted, a little hurt catching in his chest.

“You didn’t want that?”

“I don’t know what I want,” Tony mumbles, voice cracking in the middle. Steve thinks of Pepper’s soft, kind smile, thinks of Tony saying “a few weeks back”, and his stomach turns cold.

“Shit, Tony,” Steve says, and he tries to take a step back, but Tony grabs for his hip, holding him there.

“Were you working out?” Tony asks, voice low.

“No, I went flying,” Steve says, and Tony shudders, his gaze going to Steve’s wings, and Steve sees the ghost of a hungry curiosity in his face. “You want to touch, this time?” Tony hesitates, but Steve brings his wings in, and he watches Tony reach out to touch them. Steve’s tried to look after them himself – a sort of thick oil seems to come out from between the feathers, like the grease that builds up in his hair if he doesn’t wash it, and from what Steve can tell from his own exploration and the notes on Warren Worthington, it needs to be combed through and taken care of.

Having Tony’s fingers combing through his feathers is a _lot_ different to Steve’s own. Steve can’t help but sigh, relaxing a little under Tony’s careful touch – it’s not that different to having someone stroke through his hair, and it’s simply _pleasant_.

“Isn’t it weird?” Tony asks, softly, “Having something like that – like, a completely new part of your body, and just having to adapt?”

“You did,” Steve points out. Tony stares at him, opening his mouth and then closing it again, his fingers brushing through Steve’s feathers with slightly tighter grips.

“That’s different, and you know it,” Tony mutters. He stands, facing Steve properly: Tony is only an inch or two shorter than Steve at the very most, but with Steve’s wings behind him, Steve feels way bigger than him, like he’s almost _towering_ over him, and judging by the way Tony takes a glance over Steve’s shoulder and wets his lips, the same thought passes through his mind.

“Didn’t know you liked guys,” Steve says. There’s a pause.

“I don’t,” Tony replies, looking at Steve’s chin and his mouth and his jaw instead of meeting Steve’s eyes. The pause goes on.

“Right,” Steve says – it’s not as if he hasn’t heard it before. Everyone’s straight in the army – they used to be, anyway. “So, what do you want to do?” Tony glances across the room to an old cot that reminds Steve, for a strange moment, of the shitty little beds he and Bucky had had in their Brooklyn flop, back in the day, and Steve says, “I don’t think so.” Tony deflates slightly, before Steve has time to amend, “Let’s go upstairs.”

“Sure,” Tony says after a moment’s hesitation, and Steve takes Tony’s hand in his as he walks toward the door.

\-----✪-✪-✪-Ⓐ-✪-✪-✪-----

 _Shit,_ Tony thinks on the stairs, as he lets Steve lead him up.

 _Shit,_ Tony thinks in the elevator, as the floors go by with a soft _ding_.

 _Shit,_ Tony says as he stands in the doorway of Steve’s room, looking over the old-fashioned, traditional furniture: it’s homey, with thick, hand-knitted blankets over the backs of the sofas and chairs, and a hand-made quilt that Wanda had made him with the stars and stripes on it over his bed: despite that, it looks _antique_. The only thing that really goes against it is the desktop computer in the corner of the room, given its own little desk and everything.

“Shit,” Tony says as Steve undoes a fastening at the back of his shirt and takes it off with ease, letting it slide away from the joints of his wings. He’d seen the design in the pack the X-Men had sent over from Angel’s stuff, but it’s a little different seeing it come right off so easily in practice, especially given that Steve’s kicking off his trainers and wriggling out of his pants, and why the _Hell_ can Tony see Captain America’s dick?

Steve’s dick is long and kinda girthy even soft, and Tony stares at it, his mouth open. He stands there, sweaty and still with oil grease clinging to him in his lab clothes, and it never occurred to him that Captain America was packing a fucking weapon in his pants. “C’mere,” Steve says, cupping the side of Tony’s mouth, and Tony moans into his mouth as Steve kisses him hard. He’d kind of let Tony do his thing earlier, but now Steve controls it, dominating Tony’s mouth with his tongue and a little of his teeth, and when he bites at Tony’s lip and _sucks_ a little at the skin there, it should feel odd and weird and wet, but it just makes Tony whine.

Steve guides Tony towards the bed, and his hands go down to Tony’s pants, undoing his belt and unzipping his jeans as he keeps Tony too busy to worry about it, his tongue against Tony’s, his lips against Tony’s, and when their lips come apart with a slick, puckered sound, Steve’s mouth goes to Tony’s neck and he pushes Tony’s jeans down his thighs.

 _Fuck_.

“Jesus, you’re better at this than I thought,” Tony hears himself say, his voice sounding distant, and he lets Steve take off his boots and pull away his jeans. Steve chuckles, and when he leans back, Tony pulls his long-sleeved shirt up over his head, and Steve leans over him, his hands on Tony’s hips, examining the tattoos on his chest and his arms. “What, no ink?”

“I was a soldier, not a sailor,” Steve says, and before Tony can voice any offence, Steve grabs him through his boxers, and Tony hisses. “What’s that?”

“Shut up,” Tony growls, and he grabs at his boxers and pulls _them_ off as well. Steve grins at him, and Tony can’t help but look at Steve’s wings as he draws his mouth down the length of Tony’s body, his tongue catching at Tony’s abs and his hips, dipping against his navel before he draws lower. Tony’s half-hard, and Steve’s hand wraps around him, stroking over the flesh there and squeezing – not too hard – as he jacks Tony from base to head. It’s different, having a handjob from another guy – Steve just feels more certain about it than even the easiest of the girls Tony’s been in bed with before, and then he draws his thumb through the wetness beginning to pearl at Tony’s head and licks it like it’s fucking cake mix out of a bowl.

The breathy sound Tony lets out isn’t really voluntary.

“What the fuck—?”

“Gimme a sec,” Steve says, gesturing for Tony to draw himself properly up the bed, and Tony scrambles up the bed until he’s leaning back against Steve’s pillows, and as Steve rifles in his bedside table, Tony kicks Wanda’s quilt down onto the floor. Steve stops to look at him, and Tony shrugs.

It’d just be _weird_ to fuck on top of that.

Tony watches as Steve kneels on the bed beside him, and he says, “You mind if I do this myself?”

“You mind if I watch?” Steve laughs, and he wets his fingers with the little bottle; it hadn’t really registered what Steve was talking about, but as Steve lowers himself on two of his fingers with a whined little sound, his wings fluttering behind him, Tony feels like his heart is going to stop. Tony watches, unable to tear his eyes away, as Steve presses his fingers behind his cock and his balls, sinking down on top of them: Tony’s mouth is dry, his eyes focused, and Steve’s thighs quake with effort as he presses himself down. His hips roll down, and he pours a little more lube over his fingers as he adds a third, and Tony wonders how much convincing it would take for Steve to let Tony set this particular image as Tony’s desktop background.

Probably not an option, but it’s nice to think about.

“You don’t wanna, uh- top?” The word comes out a little oddly, as Tony hasn’t really had cause to use it before, and Steve chuckles, thrusting himself down onto his hand, lube glistening in the light as it slides in thick drops down his wrist.

“You had someone inside you before, Tony?” Steve asks.

“A few girls. Strap-ons and stuff.”

“Big ones?”

“Maybe not _that_ big,” Tony says, but he can’t keep the slight hunger out of his voice, and Steve laughs, the sound ringing through the room.

“Next time,” Steve promises, and he comes forwards, swinging one of his thighs over Tony’s and positioning himself over Tony’s crotch. He wraps his hand around Tony’s cock again, and yeah, _now_ Tony’s pretty hard – it’s interesting, seeing his cock alongside Steve’s, because that thing is a fucking monster, and the comparison kind of makes Tony _shake_ inside. He’s had dildos of all kind up his ass, and he’s a fan of anal play, but _that_? That’s a whole new toy, and Tony wants to play with it.

Steve stops this train of thought by lining Tony up with his ass and sinking himself down like it’s the easiest thing in the world, and Tony lets out a choked out, whimpering sound. “Jesus, Cap,” Tony says, and Steve flattens his hands out on Tony’s chest, rolling his hips down with a grin on his face, and Tony can’t help but try to drag in his breaths and keep from losing all oxygen entirely.

Steve clenches around Tony as he sinks himself down as far as he can go, and when he lifts himself up he draws Tony out to the very tip before dropping himself down again, and Tony wonders how many times Steve has done this over the years, and with how many people – and fuck, Tony doesn’t _care_ , it’s just _hot_.

He reaches up, stroking over Steve’s hips, and when that provokes no response, he wraps his hand around Steve’s cock, feeling the huge length of it in his hands, feels its pulse as he thrusts into Tony’s hand, and Tony might just cry. He’s never cried during sex before, but this seems like a pretty good time to start.

Tony tries to fuck his hips up and into Steve’s own, but Steve’s knees keep a pincer-like grip on Tony’s hips and keep him from trying to control the pace, and Tony knows he’s not going to last, knows that he’s not going to be able to hang on, but when Steve twists his hips in a way Tony just didn’t _expect_ , Tony comes like a fucking freight train.

His head tips back, his eyes closing tightly as he just _shakes_ under Steve’s body, and when Steve slowly draws himself from Tony’s cock, Tony sees a pearly-white drop of liquid cling to his asscheek and run down his thigh.

Jesus fuck. _Jesus_. **_Fuck_**.

Tony pushes to swap their positions, and Steve lets him, leans back on the bed with his weight on the heels of his hands and his thighs spread wide, and Tony drops in front of him, looking at Steve’s dick up close. He hesitates, and then he draws his tongue up the length of it, and Steve gasps, his hand grasping at the cotton of his bedsheets.

Yeah, Tony thinks he can get an approximation of this.

He wraps his mouth around Steve’s cock, tasting the salt and the slightly bitter, musty taste – cocks are weird, he knows, but this is a blowjob, not a fucking buffet. He sucks at Steve’s head before drawing back and dragging his tongue down the length of Steve’s dick again, sucking at the base of it before continuing his ministrations at the little bundle of nerves at the head – the frendle? Frenule? Something like that.

When Steve comes, it’s with a soft sound, and it spatters over Steve’s belly and his thigh as Tony leans away from the spray. Steve’s wings are softly moving behind them, and Tony wonders how sensitive they are – he knew a girl once who could come just from a really good head massage, and, well…

It’s a stray thought.

“That’s good,” Tony says, a little hoarsely, and he clears his throat to try to normalize his voice again. Steve gives a little laugh, and he wipes his belly with a tissue from the side of his bed, leaning forwards to lie on his belly beside Tony.

“Yeah, it is, huh.” Tony looks down at Steve, feeling his breathing slow down to normal, and he resists the urge to panic now the _yes sex_ hormones are wearing off. “We don’t have to get married or anything, Stark. We don’t even have to do this again, if you don’t want to.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, awkwardly. “Can I, uh- can I touch them properly?” He just wants to change the subject and keep Steve from talking, but Steve doesn’t seem to mind. He nods his head, and Tony feels himself relax a little as he climbs onto Steve’s back, straddling his ass and his lower back to have a look at the spread of his wings.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, hope you enjoyed that! Check [this link](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/post/160853818533/request-commission-information) out if you’re interested in making a request. I love requests, so please feel free to send them in! Commissions are open, and I do have a tip jar too, if you're interested.


End file.
